Hey, everyone, I’m Mike Liddell the GM of Digital at NGP VAN.
First I want to just remind folks that NGP VAN works exclusively with the progressive community. Republicans can’t use our tools. That’s important because it’s what we believe in as a company but also because it’s also what let’s us build new tools and features like the one I’m about to show you.
A couple years ago we launched Social Organizing, an award-winning tool that let’s users match their Facebook friends to the voter file…
…and then allows campaigns to mobilize their supporters and encourage them to contact their friends who are in target universes.
What we discovered though was that campaigns wanted more. It was helpful to know who was connected to who, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. I might be friends with a co-worker on Facebook but that doesn’t mean I can convince them to give $25 to Wendy Davis for Governor
Solution: What we’ve built and are beta testing with a few key clients are two new features that track not just who supporters are connected to, but who they can get to take action on behalf of a campaign or organization. The first one is called Social Fundraising, and tracks how effective a given supporter is at raising money from their friends.
The next, and this is the one I want to demo today, is what we call Social Recruiter.
Social Recruiter is simple – I set up a form with my own unique call to action…
…send my unique link out to my friends and family…
…and for everyone who ends up signing the form, I can earn points and badges.
The key to the tool is that not only is this a great way to organically build an email list – but we’re also tracking the relationships between your supporters and who they get to take action directly in the VAN database - the same database that thousands of Democrats are using to organize every day.
We call this data the action graph – it lets campaigns and organizations not only see which of their supporters are connected, but also which of their supporters has a proven ability to get their contacts to take action. As a campaign, I now know not just that Michelle Obama and Joe Biden have a connection to Barack Obama, but I also know Michelle has proven she can get Barack to take action. So if I want to get the president to show up my event, I know I need to ask Michelle to make that contact for me.
So that’s Social Recruiter, just one of the ways we’re building the progressive action graph at NGP VAN. Thanks for the time.